Two articles published in the Feb 6th edition of Arthur demonstrate an alarming lack of critical and theoretical awareness on the subject matter at hand.
Chanel Christophe’s article on Trent’s participation at a Model UN conference congratulates students for appropriating the ability of entire nations to speak on their own behalf. While I hold no doubt TCSA president Sheldon Willerton is worthy of an honourable mention for his participation in the Joint Triple Crisis on Libya Committee, are his efforts best served by representing the State of Qatar? Instead of working towards illusory resolutions for Libya, might I suggest President Willerton and Chanel Christophe for that matter, investigate how multiple corporate ties implicate Trent University to injustice in Libya? Immediately after Libya’s Col. Gadaffi was toppled, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird, led a trade mission to Libya along with the Montreal military and industrial engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, and Alberta oil giant Suncor. Both SNC Lavalin and Suncor have a history of donations to Trent University.
In fact, through his association with the “Trent University and Foothills Research Institute Grizzly Bear Research Program”, Trent’s President Steven Franklin demonstrates long standing financial ties to Suncor and other petrochemical companies. SNC Lavalin, a past sponsor of the Trent President’s Golf Tournament, has spent the past 15 years in Libya constructing mega-prisons for Gadaffi to house dissidents, as well as constructing the world’s largest water pipe-line project known as the “Great Man-Made River”.
This brings me to Natalie Guttormsson’s “Canadians for Mining Awareness” column that suggests documentary films featuring ‘adventure travelling’, ‘breathtaking scenery and stark facts’ are ‘far more effective than talking’ in their ability to ‘convince everyone that pipelines are dangerous…’. As a documentary filmmaker I could not disagree more with Guttormsson’s ‘listen more and watch more documentaries’ prescription for the next year. I say make documentaries! Turn on the lights and force the divestment of tar-sands financing from public institutions! The author is painfully unaware that advocating an altruistic duty to consume documentaries - in an of itself - represents the caring cultural capitalism that is itself the problem. If Guttormsson and others remain committed to a strategy of listening, watching, and mining awareness, then I have no doubt they will one-day watch an award-winning doc on how the glorious Tar-Sands pipeline went off without a hitch.
Zach Ruiter
